Immigration

Immigration reform must punish companies that hire immigrants who illegally enter the country.

It's really that simple.

The last major effort to crack down on illegal immigration, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, makes the point. The Reagan-era measure forced companies to require employees to prove they were legally eligible for work in America. The law promised to make the United States less appealing for border jumpers by making them ineligible for jobs.

But a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office shows that between 1999 and 2003 the federal government radically reduced enforcement muscle behind the law.

The failings cited by the GAO are rooted in the low priority the Clinton and Bush administrations placed on punishing employers that flouted the law. As a result, fines against companies and workplace arrests of undocumented workers dropped sharply during the years surveyed by the GAO.

The lack of enforcement has contributed to making the United States a haven for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants who ignore laws and cross the border in search of work.

Those numbers continue to pose security, economic and social challenges for the country, and in the process, put these illegal workers at great risk of personal harm while potentially setting back the efforts of those people in foreign countries that seek to immigrate here in a legal and orderly process.

There are a number of proposals before Congress to address these issues, but any reform package that doesn't include sufficient resources for employer sanction and enforcement efforts will undermine efforts to control borders, not bolster them.